he
ground that "cruelty, with lust and damnable baseness, cannot be
forgiven, because we cannot conceive them as being morally repented
of." But it seems to me hardly prudent, or becoming thus to set bounds
to the grace of repentance, or to say what amount of sin must
necessarily render a man incapable of being reformed. All which may in
some measure explain the Duke's severity to the smaller crime of
Lucio, after his clemency to the greater one of Angelo.

I must not leave the gentle Duke without remarking how, especially in
the earlier portions of the play, his tongue drops the very manna of
moral and meditative wisdom. His discourse in reconciling Claudio to
the quick approach of death condenses the marrow of all that
philosophy and divinity can urge, to wean us mortals from the "many
deceiving promises of life."

* * * * *

Lucio is one of those mixed characters, such as are often generated
amidst the refinements and pollutions of urban society, in whom low
and disgusting vices, and a frivolity still more offensive, are
blended with engaging manners and some manly sentiments. Thus he
appears a gentleman and a blackguard by turns; and, which is more, he
does really unite something of these seemingly-incompatible qualities.
With a true eye and a just respect for virtue in others, yet, so far
as we can see, he cares not a jot to have it in himself. And while his
wanton, waggish levity seems too much for any generous sentiment to
consist with, still he shows a strong and steady friendship for
Claudio, and a heart-felt reverence for Isabella; as if on purpose to
teach us that "the web of our life is of a mingled yarn, good and ill
together." And perhaps the seeming "snow-broth blood" of Angelo puts
him upon affecting a more frisky circulation than he really has. For
an overacted austerity is not the right way to win others out of a too
rollicking levity.

* * * * *

Dr. Johnson rather oddly remarks that "the comic scenes are natural
and pleasing": not that the remark is not true enough, but that it
appears something out of character in him. And if these scenes please,
it is not so much from any fund of mirthful exhilaration, or any
genial gushings of wit and humour, as for the remorseless, unsparing
freedom, not unmingled with touches of scorn, with which the
deformities of mankind are anatomized. The contrast between the
right-hearted, well-meaning Cla